Congratulations to Our 2016 ALA Award Winners and Honors

Yesterday the American Library Association (ALA) announced the top books, video, and audio books for children and young adults in it’s annual Midwinter Meeting.

We’d like to congratulate all of the 2016 Youth Media Award Winners, including the following HMH Books for Young Readers and Clarion Titles and authors:

The Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal Honor:

DROWNED CITY by Don Brown has won a Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal Honor, awarded annually to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished informational book published in the United States in English during the preceding year.

Marking the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Drowned City is a companion to The Great American Dust Bowl, and combines lively drawings and authoritative memoir in graphic novel form to recount one of the most destructive and devastating natural disasters in our American history.

The Pura Belpré Award for Illustration:

DRUM DREAM GIRL: HOW ONE GIRL’S COURAGE CHANGED MUSIC illustrated by Rafael López, written by Margarita Engle, has won a Pura Belpré Award for Illustration, presented annually to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.

In this picture book bursting with vibrance and rhythm, a girl dreams of playing the drums in 1930s Cuba, when the music-filled island had a taboo against female drummers.

The Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award:

Hoodoo by Ronald L. Smith has won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award, given annually to outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values.

In Hoodoo, twelve-year-old Hoodoo Hatcher was born into a family with a rich tradition of practicing folk magic: hoodoo, as most people call it. But even though his name is Hoodoo, he can’t seem to cast a simple spell.
Then a mysterious man called the Stranger comes to town, and Hoodoo starts dreaming of the dead rising from their graves. Even worse, he soon learns the Stranger is looking for a boy. Not just any boy. A boy named Hoodoo. The entire town is at risk from the Stranger’s black magic, and only Hoodoo can defeat him. He’ll just need to learn how to conjure first.
Set amid the swamps, red soil, and sweltering heat of small town Alabama in the 1930s, Hoodoo is infused with a big dose of creepiness leavened with gentle humor.